


All Our Memories Kept Between Us

by semaphore27



Series: Götterdämmerung 24/7 [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asgard, Big Brothers, Brother Feels, Brother/Brother Incest, Brotherhood, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Bonding, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Foreshadowing, Gen, Husbands, Intersex Loki, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Kid Fic, Kid Loki and Kid Thor (Marvel), Kid Sif, Kid Sif (Marvel), Little Brothers, Loki (Marvel) Angst, Loki (Marvel) Feels, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Odin's A+ Parenting, Parent Frigga, Protective Thor (Marvel), Sad with a Happy Ending, Seiðr, Thor (Marvel) Feels, Unconventional Families, Ásgarðr | Asgard (realm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphore27/pseuds/semaphore27
Summary: Part 1 ofGötterdämmerung 24/7The day his father comes back from the war, Thor discovers he's getting a new baby brother--which surprises him.  He may be just a little boy, but he could tell when his friend Einar's mamma was going to have a baby and his mamma didn't look anything like that. It's all very strange and Thor isn't sure he approves...Until he meets his new brother for himself.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Although no acts of abuse are depicted in detail, and it was my intent to depict the aftermath of abuse honestly and with sensitivity, there still a exists a prevailing theme of certain characters having suffered mistreatment in their early lives. If such themes, handled  
> as described, are likely to upset you, you may be happier reading elsewhere.
> 
> This story contains a kid (baby) Loki, rather than Kid Loki of the comics. Please assume that this baby is the same one we saw Odin take from Jotunnheim, only Aesirized.
> 
> The stories in this series combine the movies and mythology, with a smattering comicsverse mixed in. I have been known, from time to time, to play play fast and loose with any and all of the movie/mythology based.
> 
> Since the Aesir can live to immense old age, Aesir ages can be hard to pin down. For the sake of this story, let's say Thor is about 5 or 6, in a pre-1970's  
> kind of way, in which the world was assumed to be generally safe, kids ran around in large neighborhood groups, unsupervised, doing possibly dangerous things, but (usually) no one got hurt.
> 
> I always figured the Warriors 3 probably started out as something like the Warriors 7 and got whittled down over the years.
> 
> So much Icelandic! _"Þorvaldur fjölskylda"_ means simply "Thorvald Family. _"Ykka"_ is  
>  something along the lines of "you guys." _"Hvað í fjandanum er rangt við ykkur"_ is more  
>  or less "what the hell is the matter with you guys." _"Gott kvӧld"_ is kinda-sorta "good evening" and I'm using _"Húsfreyja"_ as an honorific for a married woman, the equivalent of "Mistress." If anyone has better Icelandic language skills than the paltry ones I possess, please feel free to (gently?) correct me.

* * *

When Thor awoke the morning after his father returned from the Great Battle of _Jӧtunnheimr_ , he found his nurse and two big thralls moving the furniture in his room.

“Nurse!” he cried. “What is the meaning of this? You have awakened me by moving my furniture. And besides which, I like it where it is. Move it back!”

“No, small prince, I will not,” his nurse answered--not sternly, for she was never stern, but rather round, soft and bosomy, like a gray dove, with a quiet cooing voice like a dove's voice. “This is the nursery," she continued, "And room is needed for the new baby prince who arrived last night.”

Thor fell silent. He sat on the edge of his tumbled bed in his sleep-shirt, kicked his bare legs and wondered how he had not known his mother expected a baby. When his friend Einar Thorvaldson’s mother expected her just-born baby, she waxed great like a meadhall and waddled like a goose. His mother had neither waxed nor waddled.

Perhaps, being a queen, she was above such things?

At the very least, Thor knew his mother would never push a baby out through her ladyparts whilst shrieking like a _valkyrja_ , as Einar reported his mother had done.

All of this worried Thor.

“I am a royal prince and this is my bedchamber,” he tried. “You are the servant of my body, woman.”

“You are a royal prince, that is true, my little man, but this is the nursery and I am your nurse, And you will make room for you new baby brother because your mother the queen has said it must be so.”

Thor’s legs stopped swinging. His chin sank toward his chest. He had other brothers but they were very very old and scarcely concerned him—Hӧðr was kind and careful and never did anything fun; Baldr was handsome and dashing and sometimes Thor felt he admired him so much his body could hardly contain the feeling.

But still, they were old. This new brother would be right here in his room, breathing his air. What if he touched Thor’s things? What if he broke them? Sometimes Fandral and Einar damaged his things when they played and he felt angry with them. Would it be right to be angry with a brother as with a friend?

His nurse sat down beside him on his bed, taking Thor’s hand between her own. “There is no shame, my prince, in being afraid. Many bold men know fear before great change.”

“Everything will different,” Thor said. 

“Perhaps it will be better?” his nurse suggested. “It can be a fine thing to have a brother so close to your own age. He can be keeper of your history, and you can be keeper of his, all your memories kept between you.”

Thor considered, watching the thralls construct the new baby’s cot. It was a very large thing to hold a very small person, like a ship of the air hung on gimbals within a great, round frame, the wood of it carved everywhere with runes and pictures.

Soon his mother came into his room, bearing a handful of wooden shapes hung from silver or scarlet strings. Thor ran to her, flinging his arms round her waist. Her belly, beneath his cheek and her fine robes, felt firm and flat as ever, not like the half-emptied-flour-sack belly of the mother of Einar Thorvaldson.

His mother stroked his hair, and the ends of her own long hair tickled his nose. “Not yet dressed, my darling?” 

“I was distracted by the moving of my furniture, Mamma.” 

“You do not mind him coming in with you, dearest? I want Nurse to be able to hear if he cries. I promise you he is a very..."  For just a moment, her face held a funny look, as if mamma had bitten down hard on something sour.  "A very good, quiet baby." she continued, but in a way that made Thor wonder if she meant the words, or only spoke them for his comfort.

He studied her face, trying to read the truth.

"I hardly think he will disturb you, darling. If he does, we will find another place for him.”

She spoke this last bit briskly, and Thor knew better than to argue.

“I will allow him to be with me tonight, so that he may become settled,” Thor agreed magnanimously.

“That is my generous prince,” his mother told him. She held out the wooden shapes in her hand, their strings dangling. “These are rune-sticks to hang over your brother’s cot. They will help to keep him safe whilst he is sleeping. Would you like to help me suspend them?"

"Did they hang over my bed once?” Thor took a shape with a red string into his hand.  The wood was dark with age and quite worn, with tiny marks, almost as if it had been gnawed. “Why is it red?” 

“So that the _Nornir_ will not wish an ill future onto your brother.”

Thor felt the stick more closely. Was it ashwood, perhaps?  He’d learned from his mamma that nearly all magical things were ashwood--except those made of oak or holly. The marks had almost certainly been made by tiny teeth. _Had mamma taken them down,_ he wondered, _when he’d begun to gnaw upon them?_  

He helped mamma hang the rune sticks one by one, but by the time the last swung over the cradle Thor had tired somewhat of the subject of baby brothers. He washed quickly, dressed himself all on his own and ran off through the palace to find Fandral and Sif, Hogun and Einar.

All day they climbed things, threw stones, ran and jumped and hit one another quite hard with wooden swords.

It was a perfect day.

Coming home, bruised, bloodied and happy, he learned from Einar that the _Þorvaldur fjölskylda_ , the family of Thorvald, would be moving to finer quarters very near the royal ones, because the lady-chests of Einar's mother made far more milk than little Freyja Thorvaldsdottir could drink on her own, and Thor’s new brother needed feeding. Thor did not know why his mother did not make milk for his brother with her own lady-chests, as he knew she had done not only for him but for Hӧðr and Baldr also. He felt sad for the new brother who as yet had no name, that he must drink from the lady-chests of the mother of Einar Thorvaldson and not from those of their Lady Mother the Queen.

Was he lesser, somehow, in her eyes than he and Baldr and Hӧðr?

“Honestly, _ykkur_!” Sif exploded. “Breasts. They’re called breasts! _Hvað í fjandanum er rangt við ykkur_? The next one of you who says something as stupid as ‘lady-chests’ I swear I will pop in the nose!”

“I dunno,” Fandral answered, “What in Queen Hela's Realm’s the matter with you, Sif? Sad because you haven’t grown any lady-chests yet?”

Fandral’s nose bled spectacularly. His sky-colored tunic was entirely ruined.

  


When Thor returned to the nursery, he found the mother of Einar Thorvaldson sitting in the great chair by the window, a soft shawl thrown over her shoulder and spread across her chest. Small Freyja Thorvaldsdottir lay asleep and contented in a basket by her feet. Both of them had broad, pink, happy faces and flyaway ginger hair. A delicate suckling sound came from beneath the shawl.

Thor was seized with a desire to see his small brother’s face, but he knew that would be impolite at such a time. Instead Thor remembered his manners and gave his friend’s mother greeting. “ _Gott kvӧld, Húsfreyja Ragnarsdottir_ , Wife of Thorvald.”

“Good evening, _Prinsinn_ Thor Odinson. Have you had a fine day, my dear?”

“An excellent day!” Thor responded. “My small brother drinks much milk from you. This will make him grow large and strong.”

“I should think so,” said the mother of Einar Thorvaldson. She lifted the edge of the shawl to peep beneath. “Ah, see, here he is, all done! We could not get him to drink for all of last night and all of today, until just now. I expect he was very hungry. And I expect his big brother would like to see him now, yes?”

A bird-wing flutter of pure joy and excitement rose within Thor. “Oh! May I, H _úsfreyja_ Ragnarsdottir, Wife of Thorvald?”

She reached beneath the shawl to adjust her gown, then peeled back the woolen folds to reveal the small person below.

Thor gasped. He was beautiful! The most beautiful creature Thor had ever seen. He held his own honey-pink hand against the baby’s hand, which was the color of starlight, its fingers fabulously long and delicate. When Thor brushed his fingertip against his brother’s palm, those fingers closed tightly around his much larger finger. 

Thor gasped in delight and his brother’s eyes widened. They were an amazing green, the color of emeralds, and looked as though they carried every secret of the Nine Realms. Thor bent down to kiss his brow, the thick black fluff of his brother’s hair tickling his nose. He smelled delightful, like snow and pine trees and sweet spices.

In that instant Thor’s heart tore itself apart and reformed, and he knew he would always love this brother as he did not love Hodr and Baldr (though he did love them, in his way), that this brother would be his hearth and his family, for all the years to come.

_I like the smell of you_ , said a voice in his head, the voice of quite a small person, but also the voice of someone at least Thor’s age, or even older.

“I also like the smell of you,” Thor answered aloud. He did not know how to speak in his brother’s head as his brother spoke in his, but the baby seemed to understand him. “You smell of the forest in winter, and of cups of mulled mead.”

_You smell extremely grubby, yet oddly delightful as well. Is that the smell of Outdoors?_

“I have been outdoors all day, brother. I will take you when you’ve grown a little larger. You will like it very much. We will always be friends.”

_Will we?_ The voice in Thor’s head sounded sleepy. Then he said, _I find myself strangely uncomfortable, brother_. 

“Why is my brother uncomfortable?” Thor asked. He could not bear for it to be so.

“Babies swallow air when they drink,” said the mother of Einar Thorvaldson She spread a clean white clout over Thor’s shoulder and turned the baby to rest against his chest. “Put one arm beneath his little bottom to support him, then pat and rub his back gently, just like so. He’ll soon feel right as rain.” 

Thor did as she said, his brother’s body soft and warm against his. After a time the baby coughed out a surprising amount of sour milk onto the clout.

He seemed surprised. _That was disgusting!_

“It was,” Thor agreed, as his friend’s mother took away the cloth.

_My apologies, then, brother._

“There’s no need. You are a baby. Babies do such things.” 

_And I’m meant to do it every time I eat?_

“Not for very long. Certainly not when you are my age.”

_Thank the gods for that, at least._ One of his small hands flailed, catching in Thor’s hair. _You are like the sun,_ Thor's small brother thought in a slow, tired voice, _I will lie forever in your shadow_. 

“You are like the moon, my sweet small brother, lighting up the darkness, forever lovely.”

_You will not always believe that_ , his brother said. The voice in Thor’s head sounded sad, or something like sad but slightly darker, and more bitter. _A day will come when you curse my name._

“I will never curse your name.” Thor laughed. “I do not even know your name, brother."

The voice in Thor’s head ebbed and flowed, carried away on currents of sleep. _My name is Loki._

Thor meant to tell his new brother that he'd forgotten his second name. Perhaps, being so small and new, he didn't know how names were meant to work. He pressed his own cheek against Loki’s soft white cheek, against his downy black hair. “You must say Odinson,” he whispered, into the tiny pale shell of his brother’s ear. “You are Loki Odinson, as I am Thor Odinson, and we are brothers.”


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Thor wants us to be a good brother (even if Sif _is_ right about the new baby being a _Jӧtunn_ ), but his Mamma and Father aren't helping. They don't even seem to _like_ his wonderful Loki!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greek mythology seems to disagree as to whether the Amalthea, who nourished the infant Zeus, was a nymph or a goat. Hӧðr appears to have been reading up on his Greeks and to have come down firmly on the side of TeamGoat.

* * *

His new brother was, Thor had to admit, _difficult_. Loki complained loudly, and often, about anything and everything--from the excessive heat of the nursery, to Nurse's heavy tread, to the milk of the mother of Einar Thorvaldson, which Loki disdained, although the small sister of Einar Thorvaldson thrived upon its goodness.

Loki did not thrive.  He remained thin and pale as ever.  His voice, inside Thor's head, sometimes made Thor's ears ring.

"You _know_ why mamma and father do not come to visit the nursery," Thor told Loki.  "Nobody likes a complaining baby." 

In saying this, Thor fibbed slightly.  Although, truly, their father hadnever visited, appearing to have little interest in children beneath a certain age, mamma often had. She’d sung songs and told stories, often with Thor upon her lap, feeling the softness of her, smelling the good smell of her skin, playing idly with the lovely necklaces she wore.

But now the queen did not come, and that was Loki’s fault, as Thor often reminded him.  Because no one would want to visit such a difficult baby.

Thor wasn't certain his small brother actually listened. Sometimes Loki seemed to whine for no reason whatsoever, when he'd been fed, when his clout and gown were fresh and clean, when the room seemed a perfectly comfortable temperature. Thor wished he knew the cause.  He might have helped if he knew the cause.

In his heart, though he found himself loathe to admit it, he suspected Loki had good reason to cry. All the day long, with Nurse bustling about the nursery, Loki refused to answer a single one of Thor's questions.  Rather, in the place of answers, he felt a miserable sick weakness tangling inside his baby brother. By night, though, the worst of that eased. Thor would peel off Loki’s swaddlings and let him lie on his own big bed.

Loki waved his small hands and feet happily.

 _I dislike to be swaddled_ , he said. _Why  must they do that to me?_

“I will tell them,” Thor answered, “But they probably won’t listen. Adults have their own way of doing things.”

 _It is an extremely foolish way_ , Loki sniffed.

Thor made him feel better by pushing open the big window. The cool night air poured over them. If the air grew too chill for him, Thor could easily bundle up in his sleeping furs, enjoying the contrast between the cozy fur warming his skin and the crisp air he breathed in.  Most babies did not care the cold, but Loki loved it.

The happy wave of Loki’s small arms and legs in those times reminded Thor of a dance.  A lively dance, with firelight flickering over the skins of the dancers. Loki’s mind overflowed with songs of ice and snow and mountains more beautiful and more profound than the greatest of the great sagas sung by the greatest of the great _skalds_ in their father’s court.

At times, Thor dreamed of them when he was awake. At times Loki turned blue, but not from the cold. Loki’s blue was a wonderful color, like a bright summer sky. The color suited him.

Sometimes Loki did not turn blue, but beautiful green threads twisted and leaped around his small body, rising far up into the air until they nearly brushed the ceiling. Thor’s mamma the Queen had threads like those too, except that hers were golden.

Thor wondered if he ought to ask his mamma about Loki’s threads, only he kept forgetting. He wished with his whole heart that mamma would come to the nursery and hold Loki in her arms, that she would talk to him and sing to him and play baby games, as she had done, so sweetly, with Thor when he was small.

Mamma had seemed happy for Loki to come when she placed the rune sticks--why did she scorn her baby now? Perhaps Loki was lonely for a mamma, and that was what made him cranky. A big brother wasn’t the same thing as a mamma.  He was a little small himself, though not _very_ small.  How was he meant to know the right things to do?

Nurse, of course, was less than useless, and the mother of Einar Thorvaldson had her own baby to care for.

At such times, thinking such thoughts, Thor felt extremely lonely.

* * *

One time, when Thor carried Loki about the palace to show him things, they overheard their father and mother in discourse.

“You keep that thing in our home, Odin. You ask me to lie. You ask me to nurture it and make it mine, but I find I cannot. I will not.”

“You can and you will, Allmother,” their father rumbled.

With numb feet, Loki clutched tight to his chest, Thor backed away from the door.  His heart beat too fast, and his stomach felt a little sick.

“You forget the doors of Vanaheimr are yet open to me, Allfather. I will take Thor and go.”

“If you go, Allmother, remember the doors of Asgard are forever closed to you. You will never see your sons Hӧðr or Baldr again, and they will learn to curse your name.  This I swear.”

After a moment the chamber door flung open.  Their lady mamma Queen Frigga swept by, long skirts billowing. She did not notice either Thor or Loki.

“She did not mean those words, my brother,” Thor told Loki. "It's only the way of grownups.  She did not mean them.

 _I am he which she named ‘that thing_ ,’ Loki answered, _And in your heart you know this, brother: the runes set above my bed were not meant to protect, but to cage a monster.  I am that monster._

Loki did not sound hurt or angry, only sad.

Thor knew his brother felt sad because Loki hid that feeling behind a great, high wall within his mind--but that wall might as well have been a wall of glass, Thor could see through it so clearly. His baby should not have such great, high walls inside him.

To distract Loki, Thor carried him into the throne room, where Mjolnir awaited, set aside for the day when Thor was big and strong and worthy.

“I can nearly lift her now,” Thor said proudly.  He bent low to show Loki the runes of might and protection, the intricate knotwork etched into the metal.  “Soon I shall be able to fly and to smite evildoers!”

 _Why is it yours?_ Loki asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

_We have an eldest brother and a second eldest brother, yes? Why is this magnificent hammer to be yours and not theirs?_

Thor had the oddest feeling that Loki meant to tease him, in a way he couldn’t quite catch hold of.  He felt awkward, and shuffled the soles of his soft indoor boots on the marble floor.

“Well… Hӧðr is a scholar. He has no interest, ah…

_In flying about with a magic hammer smiting the unsuspecting?_

“They won’t be unsuspecting. They will be evildoers. I’ve told you.”

 _They might be **unsuspecting** evildoers_ , Loki teased, but then, in quite a different, pained tone, he said, _I want to go back to the nursery now. My stomach hurts._

They were still an entire corridor away, just outside the chambers where Sif’s family lived, when Loki spit up a huge amount of curdled milk onto Thor’s tunic. It smelled horrible, beyond any awful thing Thor had smelled. The sticky wetness soaked through to his skin almost instantly.

Seconds later, Sif popped out of the apartment. Her face twisted in disgust.

“Faugh!” she exclaimed, “What was that noise?” She scowled first at Thor, then at Loki. “Double faugh! What is that _smell_? Thor, your baby reeks.  He's foul.  Do you want to come in? Mamma is out, but _Paddi_ knows now to clean babies just as well.”

Thor shut his eyes, listening to Loki’s thin, small, miserable cry inside his head.

“He looks as if he wants to be crying…” Sif poked Loki’s sour-milk-soaked tummy. “Yet he doesn’t cry. Your baby is very weird, Thor.”

“My baby is not weird, my baby is perfectly Loki.” Thor realized that tears had begun to flow down his cheeks, that Sif was staring at him as if he’d grown two heads, and that he was suddenly, terribly afraid, both of what had passed between his parents and of what would become of his little brother, so suddenly come into his life, and already so very dear to him.

“And there you are _blubbing_.” Sif flung an arm around Thor’s shoulders. “Honestly, I don’t know what’s got into you. I believed you to be a warrior, not nursemaid to some _Jӧtunn_ brat.”

As Sif spoke these words, she marched Thor briskly toward the nursery door.

“My Loki is not a _Jӧtunn_ brat,” Thor said. “He came from the ladyparts of my mamma the Queen.”

Sif gave him a hard stare. “Nobody is that unobservant, Thor, not even you.”

Thor's tears flowed down faster.

“I stayed up to watch the warriors ride in from _Jӧtunnheimr,"_ Sif continued, the look in her dark eyes softening slightly _._  "Your father had that baby under his cloak, Thor. I would guess, just now, he has been ensorcelled to make him look like us.  Mark my words, though--he's a _Jӧtunn_ princeling beneath it, taken for political aims that only your father knows. It’s clear he’s not your brother, though.”

Sif was Thor's friend, older than he was, tough and very smart. She knew a great number of things.

Only she didn’t know everything.

“You are my Loki, now and always,” Thor whispered in his brother’s ear. “Now and always, Loki.”

He turned to Sif, giving her a haughty, princely look that wasn’t much like him.

“Leave us here,” he said.

Sif shrugged. “Suit yourself, then.” Her eyes narrowed. “He can’t eat our food, not even breastmilk, I’ll bet. That’s why you’re wearing his breakfast on your tunic. It poisons him. They put a few _Jӧtnar_ in the dungeons, _Paddi_ said, in the Long Ago. They starved them for days and then they made them to feast on the worst things. Our things, good for us and poison to them. The _Jӧtnar_ died puking and choking and our warriors nearly laughed themselves sick. They are nothing to us. They are monsters.”

She grasped a fold of Loki’s frail, small arm between her strong young fingers and twisted cruelly. “And when this one is gone, remember, Thor--you will still want friends.”

Thor backed into the nursery, shut the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. He washed himself and dressed in his night-things, though it had not yet reached midday. He lay in his bed facing the carved wall as Nurse washed Loki.

“My brother does not wish to be dressed in his swaddlings. He wishes to be left in his clout and he wishes to lie in my bed with me. We are unwell and do not like to be disturbed."

Nurse felt of his forehead and murmured, “Cool as a moonbeam.” Her thumb brushed Loki’s hollowed cheek. “Oh, my poor dears, my poor little dears.”

Nurse rose from the bedside, brushing down her skirts. “I’ve an errand to run, darlings. Look after one another whilst I’m gone.”

“Please, Loki...” Thor began. It wasn’t fair to ask poor miserable small Loki not to cry, not when he was so hungry and weak and his belly hurt him so.

He thought of how Loki did not want to drink the good milk of Einar Thorvaldson’s mother, how she would offer him the breast several times in the day, but Loki would scrunch up his face, wriggle, cry his clear thin cry, not let the nipple go into his mouth, even though Einar Thorvaldson’s mother was kind and patient. She sang to him, rubbed his little back, tried to coax him again and again, but it was usually only one time, late in the day when he was very, very hungry, that Loki would drink.

At night, with the window open and Loki naked on his bed, kicking and waving his arms like a very small warrior in earnest battle, Thor would see the sharp lines of his hip bones and the deep hollows between his ribs.

“Freyja Thorvaldsdottir grows sleek and fat as a seal pup,” Thor said as he lay down beside Loki.  His brother's small fist caught him in the eye; it was like being bashed with a soft puff of snow.

 _What is that to me?_ Loki asked crossly.

"She drinks the good milk of her mother and waxes strong,” Thor said. “You do not drink the milk and you do not wax strong. I can see your small bones through your skin. I want you to be strong and grow up, little brother, so that we may play together through all the hours of the day."

Loki said nothing.  His mind felt far away, lost in a distant place where Thor couldn't hear him.

“Loki, Loki,” Thor said. “I am not like the cruel warriors with your countrymen. You can be a _Jӧtunn_ and my brother. It matters not to me. I only know I love you and would have you with me always. Even if you are noisy and complain.”

 _My tummy hurts_ , Loki said, sounding pitiful.

Thor stroked his soft hair and rubbed his belly gently with his fingertips, singing to him in a quiet voice until Loki fell asleep. He looked down into his brother's beautiful face and feared that somehow Loki would leave him whatever he did.

He lay on his side, staring down upon Loki's face as if to memorize every last feature.

While Loki slept on, their brother Hӧðr came into the nursery, his footsteps so soft Thor didn't realize he was there until Hӧðr stood just beside them. His clothing, well-made as befit the Crown Prince of Asgard, was all of soft browns and grays, nearly invisible in the evening shadows.

His hands rested gently on Thor's shoulder, the warmth of it seeping through his fine linen nightshirt.  For the first time in days he felt comforted.

“I hear you are unwell, my brothers,” Hӧðr said, in his kind, quiet voice.

“I am perfectly well,” Thor told him, “It’s only that I hate nearly everyone."

"Not you, Hӧðr,” he added.

Hӧðr sighed. “Our father has forbidden, for the child's own protection, that any but the Wife of Thorvald feed poor Loki. But I am sure he will not mind, once I explain. And Thor, my small brother, I wished that you might learn later in this life how difficult these Nine Realms can be. But for now I’ve something that might help our little one.”

He showed Thor a bit of clean sponge which he wrapped up in linen. “It’s called a pap, Thor. See, I'll dip it in the milk and let Loki suck. If he does well we will make a bottle for him by and by.”

Thor turned the pap over in his fingers before handing it back to his elder brother. He swirled the milk in its small, cool crock.

“Loki will not drink the milk," he said. "It will sicken him.”

“It is not the milk of a cow, my young brother, or the milk of a woman’s breast," Hӧðr explained, in his quiet, scholarly way. "It is the milk of a she-goat. The peoples of the south, you know. claim the milk of a goat is fit to suckle even a king of gods.”

Hӧðr gathered Loki into his lap with infinite gentleness.  He dipped the pap neatly into the crock, shaking off excess drops. As Loki’s apprehensive eyes watched their eldest brother’s face, a dribble of milk passed the baby’s parted lips. Loki turned his face away. His cry, this time, was hollow, desolate.

“Loki,” Hӧðr said, with such tenderness Thor’s heart was torn, “My dearest small one, it will not always be so. You will know hardship, and you will know shame, but you will learn, you will grow, and you will know love.  All this is true, for I have seen it.  The world, and your life, will not always bring you pain. Please believe me."

More milk dribbled between Loki's lips.

"Thor needs you," Hӧðr said, his hand cupped over Loki's dark hair.

“I do need you, Loki,” Thor whispered into his small brother's perfect shell-white ear. “I do. And Sif is a _heimskurhöfuð_. A stupidhead. Never listen to her.”

Loki’s green eyes narrowed. He studied Thor’s face consideringly with his slightly-unfocused baby eyes.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, he said at last. _It may be a bumpy road_.

“That doesn’t matter,” Thor said stoutly.

 _It may. For a time_.

Loki, his own Loki, was so very lovely. The loveliest thing in all the Realms. Thor stared at him, enchanted.

 _I beg your pardon_ , Loki said, when a short time had passed, sounding nothing at all as if he was begging anyone’s pardon for anything. _I **am** hungry, you know_.


	3. Part Three:  Modern Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two brothers, past, present and future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although I don't go into graphic detail anywhere, there is a general cloud of horrible parenting (mostly Odin) hanging over parts of the chapter, with a side order of Baldr being despicable and a garnish of Frigga providing too little, too late. The good news, though, is that it's really about coming through that hurt and winding up in a better, healthier place.
> 
> Hela, or Hel, was traditionally a pale woman, half-living/half-dead, whole rules over the dead. Loki and Tony's Hela is Valkyrie (or, _Valkyrja_ , chooser of the slain). Not content with that, and with a tip o' the hat to Neil Gaiman, _American Horror Story_ and an episode of _Twilight Zone_ I saw when I was a kid, I had the idea of there being not just one Death, but many (personally, I fully expect to meet the Death of the Irredeemably Clumsy someday). Hela is Blessed Death, the one who brings an end to suffering that is past enduring. Neither she, or Valkyries in general, resemble their movieverse counterparts.

Move forward a millennium and more, to a different Realm on the great World-Tree, another time, an island of Midgard, to the north, off the eastern coast of America. The families of two brothers, on holiday.

There’s a short, quick-tongued, spiky-haired older man playing catch with his sons (this includes the one, changeable as quicksilver, who’s a daughter from time to time--or, for that matter, whatever shape he chooses, whenever he chooses). There’s something about this man that would make you say, _That guy has lived a good life. That man is loved. That man is content. That’s one happy guy_.

Nearby lounges a tall, fabulously elegant young lady reading a collection of Greek tragedies. In Greek. She wears Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and has elaborately coiffured hair--yes, even at the beach. Her legs are approximately five miles long. You might think she was a high fashion model, except that she smiles so easily. Her real job (and she has one) is infinitely less remunerative and exponentially more serious. She performs it superbly.

Until that moment she’ll leave her gloves on, thank you very much.

Yes, she means it. Really.

There is a smiling brown-haired woman with a serene face and intelligent eyes, running with her twin children in and out of the frothing surf, out and in, in and out, to the tune of delighted screams.

By one of those weird twists of fate nature sometimes likes to play, the boy is slight, dark-haired, delicately attractive like his mother. The girl is shiningly beautiful, with honey-gold skin, quantities of golden hair, sky-blue eyes. She’s huge--already, at age five, almost taller than her mother. She’s what is meant when it’s said a girl looks "like a Valkyrie."

She might correct your pronunciation to _Valkyrja_ , though possibly not. Being so young, she’s still a little shy.

She’ll soon get over it.

Lastly, there’s a tall, slender man asleep in a lounger beneath a canopy, and the extreme pallor of his skin should make it no surprise that he’s not at his best in sunlight, or in heat. Pallor does not sound like a beautiful thing, but his is like moonlight and starlight. It captures radiance. It glows, in the most lovely meaning of that word. His shining hair, in long, soft curls, is onyx black, like the tragedy-reading girl’s. He shares her lovely features and, even in sleep, her elegance. If you saw him smiling you would have to smile in return.

A brand new, robust, brown-haired baby sprawls across his bare chest, wakes briefly to nurse, falls back to sleep again.

The man (who isn't exactly a man, either in his anatomy or in his relationship to humankind) is waiting for his brother to arrive. Waiting and dreaming, so tired, and so content…

 _Thor will be here by and by…_  he thinks, spreading one long hand across the small baby's back, relishing the warmth, the softness of his skin.

 _Thor is coming...  Thor will be here..._

Was there a time when that wasn't the most wonderful of things?  The happiest of anticipations.

He can't remember.

He sleeps.

* * *

The last ball tossed and caught, Tony kneels by his husband’s side, kissing his forehead.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty..."  He brushes back a few loose strands of Loki's hair.  "Have a nice time napping through all the fun?”

Loki groans, doing a general (and dramatic) flail of despair, while somehow managing not to disturb the baby in any way whatsoever.

“Oh, I did not!" He groans again. "Did I? All through the picnic and everything? How much do the children hate me?”

“Considering you just spent twelve months growing a whole new person inside you, one who will eventually give them birthday, _Jul_ and Christmas presents, I think they’ll recover.” Tony bends, capturing Loki’s mouth, biting his lower lip softly, slipping his tongue between Loki’s lips, the taste of Loki all the intoxication he’ll ever need, for all the rest of his days.

Loki sighs, sliding back into that state halfway between sleep and waking, even as he strokes Tony’s bare leg, fingers slipping up beneath the hem of his shorts.

“Mmn, I love the feel of you, husband.” His fingertips trace the crest of Tony’s hip, then slide toward center, and down, cupping the weight of him tenderly.

“Much as it pains me to say, sleepy horny husband.” Tony retrieves the wandering hand and pats it gently. “Maybe not in full view of our kids, your brother’s kids and the sister-in-law? Which isn't to say I don't adore you and your post-pregnancy hormones.”

“ _Nornir_!” Loki jerks upright, then instantly hunches over. “Oh, by the glorious Nine, that hurts! Thor once spoke, when small, of women pushing babies out through their 'ladyparts.' I swear to you, Tony--and with no disrespect to those ladies--this is worse.”

“Considering they just cut a giant Martin-baby out through your Lokiparts, I’m sure it _is_ worse. Not to mention Maria two years before that. And Edwin two years before that. And the Big Three in their own special way…”

“Tony,” Loki mumurs. “I am very well, and quite desirous of pursuing this topic.  However... I am also tired. So extremely tired.”

“Of course, babe."  Tony rests his hand on Loki's already-flat belly.  "I’m an idiot, as usual. Once an idiot always an idiot, right?” Tony raises the head of the lounger a little, supporting Loki’s weight. He sneakily tugs down the waistband of Loki’s yoga pants just a little, just for a second, checking for blood.

There isn’t any, the gods (or Hank McCoy's excellent medical skills) be thanked, just a long clean scar like a taunting smile on Loki’s smooth white back, marked by a neat row of black stitches.

 _I can have him any time I want, Stark_ , that scar seems to taunt him, _Do you honestly think you can stop me?_

Tony's damned, and triple-damned, if he's going to listen to that kind of thing.

“I tweaked the muscles,” Loki said. “Foolish of me. What’s that you say? ‘Slow and steady, my ivory turtle?’ I am very happy and very well, just as I've said. Every sleep replenishes me.”

“’My ivory turtle?” Tony chuckles.  It's hard not to be amused by a loopy Loki. “Babe, you are well and truly in an altered state of consciousness.”

“Mmn,” Loki admits, “Perhaps.” He sounds as if he's answering some different remark entirely.

“Hey, New Kid on the Block, whaddaya say we take you back up to the house let your _Pabbi_ nap on?” Tony cradles Martin against his chest, already feeling the last of the fear ebb and the enormous, overwhelming love wash over him. Martin's a big boy but, damn, otherwise that kid looks like him, even more than Edwin does—his eyes, his hair, his _ears_ , for the gods' sakes—the first of his and Loki’s living children not to have some hint of exotic alien beauty.

And Martin's going to be the last. He is. Tony can't put Loki--nonchalant as he might be about the whole process--through this again.

Loki cracks an eye. “Beloved, when you loom over me and brood, it is scarcely conducive to my undisturbed rest. Change Martin’s nappy and put him in his crib. I don’t wish to see you again until you and the children have built an elaborate functional robot. Extra points if it does something I particularly enjoy. Go now, if you will.”

“I love you,” Tony says. He hasn't meant for his voice to sound hoarse and a little desperate, but it does.

“And I love you, heart of my heart.” There's nothing in Loki’s voice that isn’t kind, warm, and content.

Smiling, he watches his husband climb the steep stair toward their temporary home, before sleep claims him again, and he dreams

* * *

Thor did not like the The Forest of Very Small Trees, but Loki did. He liked it better than Outdoors (which Thor liked best of all), or the Nursery, or the dark corridors they explored by night from time to time, when Loki made the Glowings to brighten their way.

The room where the Trees lived was quiet and still. It possessed several long tables, good for curling under if one was noiseless and small. Loki could open one of the boxes that the Trees lived in, letting them lie upon their sheets and sing to him. When he was very fortunate, the Trees showed him pictures.

They were his friends, and Loki loved them. They taught him many things.

The Forest of Very Small Trees was also a good place because Baldr never went there, though he often came into the nursery. If Thor occupied the nursery with him, their older brother would merely leave him to sleep. If Loki was there alone... well, then, someone might be hurt.

It was the way of things.

Loki often slept beneath the tables with his head on the boxes of the Trees, dreaming of the songs they contained.This particular night, the Trees sang a dream to him in which Thor said, “What fine Glowings you have made for us, Loki, amongst divers other useful and beautiful things! Would that I possessed the fine skills you possess!”

He'd sunk deep into a dream in which he and Thor each held a box of Small Trees, and opened them together, sharing the songs, each very glad of the other’s company, when the sole of a golden shoe pressed down--quite accidentally, Loki suspected--upon his hand.

Loki squeaked once, a startled mouse. Immediately, he withdrew to the deepest shadows, hoping not to be noticed. Perhaps he was not allowed here?

If his Forest of Very Small Trees was taken from him, he would have nothing.

Loki's hand hurt him, but he did not care.

“Please,” he said, “I am careful. I hurt nothing. I only wish for the Trees to sing to me.”

“How strangely you speak!” said the voice of a lady from far above Loki's hiding place. “Come out, little one. Let me see you.”

She did not have an angry voice. Perhaps, he thought, she might even be kind.

At any rate, Loki had learned it was always best to do what the large people said as quickly as possible, the better to avoid trouble. He slid out at once and climbed to his feet, stealing peeks at the lady under the overgrown tangle of his hair (nurse pulled, sometimes, and other times became impatient, and Loki did not like her to cut it).

The lady was beautiful and grand, with long, curling, golden hair. She was the one, Loki knew, who Thor called “Mamma,” though Loki was not precisely sure of that word’s meaning. He had seen her from distances in the palace, watching from his secret spaces.

“What is your name, child?” the grand lady asked. “You are very small to be out alone, and at such an hour.  To whom do you belong?”

“I am Loki. I belong to Thor. In the Nursery.” Loki pushed back his long hair nervously. “I have only come to hear the Trees sing.”

The lady lowered herself to sit cross-legged upon the floor. Smiling, she said to him, “Would you show me, Loki, how the Trees sing to you?”

Loki brought out his latest box of Trees and showed her. He hadn’t known before then that the Trees were called runes, the sheets pages, the boxes, books. How he loved to know the proper words for things!

The wonderful song that the runes made to his eyes was called reading, and he was not alone in being enchanted by that music, because the grand lady Frigga, who was Thor’s mamma, loved books and reading too. And from that night on, he was her Loki, and she was his mamma as well as Thor’s.

From that night on, she did not hate him, even if he was a monster.

As years passed, Loki forgot he'd ever been a monster at all.

 

Loki feels sorry now ever to have disappointed her with his wild ways. He feels sorry the last words they spoke to one another had been hard words. Most of all he is sorry that she cannot be there with them on this peaceful day, by the seaside, laughing with her children and _their_ children, all of them happy, loved and loving--and, most of all, together.

And if, perhaps, a bit of mischief can be introduced into the mix, so much the better.

In his sleep, Loki grins.

* * *

Thor leaves Mjolnir in the patio firepit, reckoning, at the least, that no one will trip over her there. The hammer can be difficult at times, as he is the only one who can move her, and he seems to have developed quite a talent for leaving her in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in everyone’s way.

Thor would swear he saw Cap move Mjolnir once, when Thor forgot her on the sofa in Avengers Central and Cap was searching  for the TV remote beneath the cushions. Cap moved the hammer to look underneath, then put her back in a very shifty (for Cap) manner, as if he’d thought he might get caught cheating.

Thor wants to sneak up on Loki, only for fun, the sort of fun they were discouraged from pursuing when they were boys, in those days when his brother rebelled constantly against such rules. He's fully aware that he hasn’t really a chance against his clever brother, but hope springs eternal, as Jane has been known to say--only he’s barely ducked beneath the canopy before Loki’s voice rings out to him through the dark.

“Hello, Brother.”  Thor can hear Loki's smile.

“Hello, dearest Loki.” For a moment, it bothers Thor that he can’t see Loki’s face, but then his brother takes the merest step forward and is illuminated, aglow in starlight and moonlight, as when first they met, when Loki was so helpless, and so small.

“You always were the most beautiful,” Thor said.

“Do not, for my love, let Lady Jane hear those words pass your lips,” Loki laughs.

“She finds you surpassingly lovely, too, brother.”

“As I, her.” Loki laughed. “Remember when she struck me? Such a blow! ‘ _And though she be but little, she is fierce_.’”

“Shakespeare,” Thor says, in a tone he hopes sounds wise.

"I'm impressed, Thor!"

It's Thor's turn to laugh. “More than half of what you quote is Shakespeare, therefore, if I _always_ say 'Shakespeare,' I'll find myself in the right more than half of the time.” He drapes his arm round Loki’s shoulders, warming and supporting him--for he senses that, even after much sleep, Loki remains tired--holding him close.

“Are you well, my brother?” Sometimes Thor thinks he misses his brother's ability to heal even more than Loki does.

Loki glances at him sidelong, green eyes sparkling. “Happy and well, brother. Well and happy.”

They climb slowly from the beach to the patio, pausing there for Loki to catch his breath, sitting side by side in the slanted driftwood seats that overlook the night-dark ocean. All's quiet, is stillness.  The long slope of the sand below smooth as a new-made bed, a frill of white foam where water meets land and, beyond, the subtle roll of the breakers, pewter and indigo under the moonlight.

Behind them rises them the tall narrow brick red house, its windows darkening one by one, as lights are extinguished and those they love drift to bed.

“Would you like a little fire?” Loki asks. “I will clean out the grate if you fetch some wood.”

“I…” Thor begins

Loki bends low, flipping Mjolnir upward with a graceful flick of his wrist, holding the hammer cradled against his chest, and grinning as if his face would split.

“What magic is this?” Thor asks in wonder, suspicion lying nowhere near his heart.

Loki swings the hammer round his wrist again, his expression full of mischievous joy, playfulness, caring, light. His eyes sparkle brightly in the darkness.

“You know," he comments, "She is actually lighter than one expects.”

“Loki, my brother…” There's wetness on Thor's cheeks.

“Remember what Hӧðr said, so long past?” Loki places the hammer gently into his brother's arms. “We were innocent once and now are innocent again, if you can believe it. Rather amazing, really. Thank you for not actually turning me to Loki-salsa at points in between.”

Thor’s heart is too full for speech. He traces the patterns on Mjolnir’s head, his face--if he only realized--like Loki’s when he tunes one of his instruments, his whole self concentrated on listening.

The hammer sings to him of Old Days, of Future Days.  She sings to him the Names of the Worthy, and the name she gives to Thor’s brother is not Loki Odinson or Laufeyson,  not Liesmith or Silver-Tongue, or even Friggason or Stark, it is _Barn-bjargvættu_ r.

Loki Childsaver.

“Don’t be sad, Thor. Don’t be sad.” Loki takes Mjolnir away again, setting the hammer gently to one side where no child will trip over the handle. “Sit a moment.” He pats the lumpy gray seat of one of the driftwood chairs, seating himself in the other.

When he brushes one palm across its opposite, a blossom of green flame blooms in the firepit.

“Talk with me, brother?” Loki asks.

Thor sits, slightly uncomfortable because not only is the chair most unfortunately made, but because Jane and Tony both had exhorted him in no uncertain terms that he must not keep his brother out late, but bring him into the warmth to eat, and sleep properly in his bed.

“Do not worry if they fuss at you.” Loki slips down from his chair, feet tucked beneath him, elbows on Thor’s knees. “You know they still have to answer to me.”

“And you do... as you will do.” Thor brushes back Loki’s wind-blown, curling hair back from his face, Loki's skin cool as the moonlight itself against his own warm skin.

“Always now,” Loki replies, with a merry grin.

Thor thinks of all the times he might have lost his brother, from the most recent, when there was dark magic and Tony had gone away, back and back to their very earliest days.

Loki, no doubt, followed the trail of his thoughts.

“You were the only one, Thor," he says quietly. "The only one. My Northern Star. My cornerstone.”

Thor considers taunts and jeers, jaunts away with his friends, slights, insults, his brother left behind, wounded, nearly half-a-hundred times on the battlefields of distant worlds. He remembers Loki calling his name, forever trying to catch up to him, trying to force his more fragile body to do all his own sturdy body did.

When, after Loki’s babyhood, had Thor sided with him against Einar or Sif or the Warriors?

He sees Loki in the form of a salmon, new-caught, struggling, struggling. Loki crying out, “My brother, my brother, let me escape! I shall swim away and never come here again. But if you give me to our father, he will keep me in anguish for eternity.”

It hadn’t sounded so very bad at the time, not for the great crime of dishonoring their brother Baldr, as their father explained.

“Brother,” Loki had said to him, some months before, “Baldr comes to me, and mother will not hear me, where else may I turn?”

Thor remembers laughing, “No one would want you, Lolo, with your thrall’s hair, skinny like a skeleton- least of all my princely brother Baldr.”

And yet he’d known from the smirk hidden in the corners of Baldr’s mouth. He’d known from his mother’s silences and his father’s disgust, the ball batted back and forth between them of: _this is your fault... not mine! it is yours..._  When Loki "accidentally" fell from the airship, well, everyone knew how clumsy the youngest prince was, no need to waste the healers’ time, he'd mend soon enough.

Or, passing by his brother’s rooms on his way to Sif’s, Thor overheard his father storm, “This one simple thing and you couldn’t accomplish it! As useless in the taking of your own life as in anything, eh, my princess?”

“It was a distance equal to that of from the top of your tower to its foot, and onto cold stone at that,” Loki had perfected, even then, the art of sounding bratty. “I assure you I broke apart most satisfactorily. The squelch could be heard for a league, I am told, and caused brave men to vomit and strong women to cry. However its hardly my fault I have not been properly trained. Without training I cannot withdraw my seiðr, and if I cannot withdraw my seiðr, I cannot properly die. Frightfully inconvenient, but what can we do?”

Thor had shrunk behind a pillar, knowing it a ridiculous hiding place made even more ridiculous by his own massive size, but his father’s fast-approaching footsteps left him no choice. Then the steps ceased, turning back into room, followed by the sound of heavy blows, falling one after another, and Odin’s voice raging, “You have stolen my sons, you have stolen my sons!”

Loki had only laughed.

In time the Allfather took himself and his rage from the room and Thor crept in, not a thunderer at all, as men called him, but a small, whipped dog frightened of his master. He poured out water into a cup and tried to give Loki a drink, but Thor’s hands shook so badly he slopped most of it all over everywhere.

 _Just suck it out of my shirt, shall I?_ asked Loki drily inside his mind.

Thor started to giggle. He giggled and guffawed and coughed and spluttered and, suddenly, felt horribly ill. He would have been sick, except that Loki soothed him with gentle mind-touches.

He remembers Loki in their mother’s garden only a few months before that time, how he'd asking Loki whose children he carried, soothing him. He had been a child then. Now he was a man.

"Would you like to hear your nephews?" Loki asked. "They live still.  Lay you head upon my belly—see how round now my little ones make it?—gently, gently, I am not so broken as my father thinks, and I do heal--but I am broken enough." He had sung to the ones he loved, to Narfi and Vali and Thor, in the moonlight and starlight of his mindvoice, until the Allfather’s guards dragged Thor away.

 

In the here and now, Thor finds himself kneeling, still on the patio and not the Asgard-that-was, the granite pavers cold beneath his knees on the patio.  He curls up small as it is possible for a being his size to curl, all of himself that he can press against his brother pressed, as if in hope of being able to could crawl into some warm, safe space. He trembles and weeps as Loki supports him with one arm, stroking his back and shoulders and hair with the other.

“You were due a meltdown, dear brother,” Loki tells him, his voice half laughing, half tender. “’Golden Prince,’ my arse. My poor Thor.”

He studies Thor’s face when, at last, he sits back on his heels.

“Your terrible brother,” Thor gasps out, shaking. “How could I, Lolo? How could I not defend you, love you? How could I turn you over to him?”

“Not your finest hour, I admit. At least you never plotted to enslave Midgard…”

“Ah!” Thor said. “Not you! Thanos and The Other.”

“Very well. I did scheme and manipulate, though, and I attacked you with a giant robot.”

“It was an excellent robot,” Thor told him. “Wonderfully shiny and dramatic. The fire inside was a nice touch.”

“I am glad you liked it,” Loki says, grinning. “Oh, ouch, Christ, Thor, help me up.”

Thor laughs and helps him, “Incidentally, for how long have you sworn by the Christian man-god? You have not learned this from Kurt your best friend, for he worships the Christian man-god and takes not his name in vain.”

“Thor, you must admit that was a convoluted sentence even for you.”

“I feel considerably lighter,” Thor said.

Smiling, he bends, picking Loki up gently. “I shall carry you like a bride, my brother.”

“That one is problematic too. It pulls my stitches.  And I am able to walk, you know.”

“I’m afraid that I bruised your babyoven clinging to you so hard.”

Loki laughs. “Ah, do I detect the vocabulary of Lady Darcy. Do give her my best. And inform her that I do not have, nor have I ever had, a 'babyoven.' At Avengers Central, the preferred term is currently split between 'psueterus' and 'fwomb.'”

“It’s a racing car sound!” Thor says.

“It is a racing car sound,” Loki agrees. “Ah, Thor, are any gods so fortunate? We two have people who love us. We have people who _like_ us. We have children and employment and amusements. We have celebrations instead of tedious feasts. We watch movies, play music, fight on a less than epic scale, make up…”

“Have makeup sex on a more than epic scale.” Thor grins. “Do you ever pick small fights with Tony, simply to…?”

Loki winks.

Thor sets him on his feet with perfect tenderness, steadying him until he catches his balance on the slightly-uneven pavers.

“My body is not yet accustomed, it seems, to not having a mighty sack of potatoes hanging off the front of me.

“My poor Loki.” Thor lays a hand gently against his back.

Loki tries to bear the touch with a smile, knowing his brother means to soothe, not hurt him, but Martin had been a big baby, nearly twelve pounds at birth, and his birth has left a correspondingly large scar, and Loki’s healing factor hasn’t worked properly since the day Victor von Doom struck him with a mechano-magical beam--nearly eight years before now.

He did not age... but he also did not heal.

“Have you thought what happens, brother, when the long-ahead time is past, and all this…?” Thor waves a big hand.

 _All this_ , Loki thinks. _These wonderful people, these wonderful lives_.

Some of the children will be like them—Hela, definitely, Fen and Jӧri, Sleipnir, Thor’s _Valkyja_ daughter Arnfridr. Jane and Tony had eaten of Idunn's apples, his and Thor's wedding gifts to those they loved, but as for the others... As for the others in all their sweetness, only time could tell.

It was not always a bad thing, his lovely Hela--his Blessed Death--would say, to live a short life well and wisely, then pass away. Nor was a long, long life, say, of power-mad cruelty and greed such a fine thing. They need only look to Odin for illustration.

But then Hela's eyes would search his and she'd say, "You will find a way, _Pabbi_? Yes? You will find a way?"

Loki's smile always reassures her, because Hela needs it to be that way.

“I will keep your memories, dearest brother, and you will keep mine, and we will walk on through this world together,“ Loki says.

“Always, Loki,” Thor answers.

“Always, Thor,” Loki agrees.

They reach for one another’s hands without looking, take and hold them fast, listening to the night wind, the low grumble of the sea, the sounds of their dear families settling into sleep.

And Loki thinks, _von Doom, I will let you steal nothing, nothing that is mine_.


End file.
